It sounds obvious, but 60 percent of marketers send all of their leads to sales and only a quarter of those are qualified.

Laura Cross of SiriusDecisions knows how to boost conversion rates by creating a systematic, repeatable and measurable lead nurturing process. Below, she answers some common questions:

1. What type of nurture would you recommend every organization have?

We recommend every organization at a minimum implements four primary types of nurture –preMQL, active and passive recycled and also reconstituted for all the reasons discussed during the webinar. We also recommend our clients have customer nurture programs to improve loyalty and generate incremental opportunities. There may be additional nurture recommendations depending on the client’s objectives – things like industry, product/service mix, geography and length of buying cycle would all be factors contributing to the recommendations.

2. What about customer nurture – is that not something you recommend?

Quite the contrary, SiriusDecisions has extensive research on customer nurture and a service called Account-Based Marketing that focuses on integrated marketing initiatives and sales alignment requirements to deliver and measure impact with target groups of customers and prospects. Beyond demand creation, ABM looks at the role of marketing throughout the customer lifecycle including the development of insights and advocacy to support better execution and revenue outcomes. Customer nurture specifically increases loyalty and adoption as well as generates incremental opportunities. The webinar wasn’t focused on customers specifically, but one recommendation when focusing on customers is to ensure your data is very specific. Generic communications to your customers or communications with inaccurate or missing data points will not provide a valuable customer experience.

3. How many touches are optimal in a typical nurture program?

I wish I could tell you the exact number. The recommendations we make are based on our extensive research. However, there is no substitute for testing. We recommend with any nurture program (or any communication for that matter) that you are always testing. Test subject lines, test content, offers, test the time of day and day of week sent, test the time between sending email communications, test leveraging other tactics, test the number of touches. Every communication you send or tactic used should be analyzed. If you see your unsubscribe (opt-out) or spam (complaint) numbers increasing above your typical baseline, then you need to pause and investigate.

4. How do I start a conversation with sales about nurturing their opportunities in the case of Reconstituted?

The conversation with sales shouldn’t start with reconstituted nurture. It should start with a service-level agreement (SLA). Reconstituted should be one aspect of the conversation. Once you have the SLA in place and sales and marketing have agreed to the definition of a lead, the time allowed for each stage of the demand waterfall, primary and secondary roles marketing and sales will play, the conversation should fall into place.

We highlighted that one and done tactics underperform by 5:1. The ability to execute multi-touch, multi-channel nurture programs is easiest with a marketing automation platform. Could it be done manually? Perhaps. Would it be advised, no.

6. Would a prospect be in multiple nurture tracks at the same time?

For the four nurture types I shared with you today, the answer would be no. Pre-MQL, active and passive recycled and reconstituted all have a specific entry and exit point that would mean the prospect would not be in more than one of these types of nurture programs. However, the general answer for all types of nurture, would be yes. In order to execute successfully however, you need to ensure the participation in multiple nurture programs makes sense, provides relevance and value to the prospect and doesn’t interfere with the sales process.

7. Do I have to have a service-level agreement with sales in order to make nurture work?

Have I seen organizations execute nurture without SLAs, sure. Is it best-in-class? No. We recommend having the SLA in place with both teams, and all stakeholders, having agreed.